Polemics, Orthodoxy
Vern Peterman · Apr 30, 2006
Polemics, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262350126262

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we have kind of two parts here. This is officially, or technically, we're going to be talking about orthodoxy, and we'll explain that in a minute, next week looking at Roman Catholicism. In truth, because their paths, their past's paths, are parallel, especially at the beginning and then towards time you know, later on, the two main groups diverge. We'll be looking at them kind of together, this time looking more at Orthodoxy, next time looking more at the Roman Catholic Church. So that's kind of the pattern here. And you've got the handout here for Orthodoxy. Everybody's got that covered? Okay. So let's take a look at it.

You've got this little thing, the diaspora. What's the diaspora? That's not a disease. What is it? It's the dispersion. Okay. And there's what happened. How did the church get dispersed? How did that take place? Pardon? Persecution. Right. Under which situation? Well, you're right, but that's later. Pardon? In the times of Paul, and except actually, Paul wasn't even a believer when this took place. How about that? What's it talking about initially here? When did the first persecution hit?

Stephen. In the book of Acts, Stephen, and you mentioned Paul, but in fact, Paul was doing what at Stephen's death? He was a coat hanger. He was holding the coats. So Paul was not yet a believer at that moment, but the church began to disperse at the persecution that began with Stephen's death.

And so this is kind of charting that. What you have is a shrunken version, which on one hand you might say, oh, it's a little small. On the other hand, don't take the dots too literally. What these are are some of the places where we've got churches that have been marked on here with little dots, I can think of some that they probably should have had on here, so the gray areas are probably a little bit more to be taken literally. Nonetheless, the idea is this.

In the first century under the ministry of the apostles, churches were first founded in Judea, right, and in Samaria, and it was with the persecution under Stephen that the church began to spread into other areas. I'm wondering, Let's see, we've got just one more of these. I'm trying to figure out why we're short.

Anyway, the dispersion under Stephen, or after Stephen's death, spread the church into other areas. The church went not only into other areas of the Roman Empire, and that's what this little map, and we see on the overhead corresponding as well, shows, but also went into other areas that are off the map, including down into Ethiopia, including east.

We have multiple indications that Thomas went as far as Madras, India, specifically to Madras, India, with the gospel. less than certain indications, but indications nonetheless in as far as Britain and China that the gospel went that far, even in the first century.

The church was at that time looked upon as one body. There was a continuous mention of the faith among the apostles. From every instance we have, including Paul's very first missionary journey, The churches were established and a plurality of elders was put in place.

Aside from the apostles and those that the apostles designated, there wasn't any pattern of, here's one guy who's over a bunch of churches, which is, of course, a pattern that's taken over a great many denominations and church groups now. So there doesn't appear from anything in scripture to be any structure of the apostles left in place for someone having authority over multiple churches, aside from the apostles and others that they specifically designated and corresponded with. Example, Timothy, where he sent Timothy to Ephesus, for example. But the pattern is a plurality of elders, no greater authority structure than elders in a plurality, at each local church.

That's what we see in scripture. But that arrangement, and we show it here with Clement and Ignatius, and it's just the very year that John died was when Clement sent this letter from Rome. Here he was calling himself the Bishop of Rome, sent this letter off to the church at Corinth, hundreds of miles away. about that same time Ignatius is in Antioch and he writes to this church near Ephesus, and he says, you can't even hold the Lord's table unless the bishop is there. Where was that in Scripture?

So all of a sudden this pattern begins of men exercising authority way beyond anything authorized by Scripture. Now, at this time, still, the Church is under persecution from the Roman Empire. While the Church is under persecution, see this little map at the bottom there? While the Church is under persecution, the Roman Empire in 284 made an administrative split because it was big and hard to keep things in contact with each other, so they made an administrative split It didn't split the empire, but just an administrative convenience of an East and a West empire. Because you figure if you try to get messages and information back and forth, it was easier if you split it that way. So they made that split. Now, the churches are still being persecuted by the Roman Empire, right? And the split is just an administrative convenience. then, now we're at the top of page two, right?

For the Roman government. It was an administrative convenience, so they said, for us to split up the empire into these two administrative districts. Constantine declared Christianity legal in 312 AD, and then he called about a little over a dozen years later, called for the bishops in the churches to meet at Nicaea, 325. Now let's think about here for a minute. Here's the Roman emperor calling the bishops to meet. Suppose you're in Babylon. You're at the church at Babylon. Or maybe you're over in Madras, India.

Do you care what the Roman emperor says? No. So already you have the beginnings of some kind of a separation there just on the basis of political domains. Because once you get beyond just the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, you're off into other empires and other governments. So if the Roman emperor says, we've got to have a meeting of the bishops, you say, who says? Who cares? Right?

So there's the beginning of a division right there. Then you have a new eastern capital of the Roman Empire by 330 AD. So now it's no longer Rome as the only place calling the shots. This eastern capital is Constantinople, or today it's Istanbul. And so here you get the, since things are starting to split.

We start to see also another pattern, and that is among the churches. So you have the Rome in the west and the Constantinople in the east. Among the churches, this was the pattern. You had this pattern of bishops controlling churches in an area. This pattern of bishops has a bishop in Rome, a bishop in Constantinople, a bishop in Antioch, one in Jerusalem, and one in Alexandria, that have kind of the highest level of regard and power. There were other bishops, but these five had the highest level of power and regard. In the West, the highest level was Rome. No challengers. In the East, Although there were four that had the highest level, Constantinople was the one given the place of highest honor.

We mentioned the Council of Nicaea. This is one in 325. This is where they developed the first part of what's called the Nicene Creed. That's from Nicaea. And one of the issues there was the deity or divinity of Jesus Christ. And so that was one of the points that was being settled there. By the way, Da Vinci Code? Tomorrow's May, isn't it? Right? May 19th, the movie will be released. It's got big bucks and big names behind it. I notice they're already starting to push ads for it and trailers and things of that sort.

The Da Vinci Code says that it was at this council that they established the deity of Christ, that prior to that the church didn't believe in the deity of Christ, which is absolute rubbish. The Da Vinci Code also says that it was decided that Jesus was deity by a close vote. Out of close to 300 bishops, two of them voted negative. I don't know how you call that close, but at any rate, Absolute garbage.

But nonetheless, that's what's going to be presented. But the Council of Nicaea was indeed to deal with the fact there were those who had some opposing views and they were substantially set aside. That's what it was dealt with. There are the seven councils, and I say seven, and even though you've got eight listed, and that's because the one in Constantinople in 692 was counted in the prior council. In other words, they just said, that's a part of this other one, we're just finishing up the work. So that's why the seven councils, even though there were eight.

But here's some of the things to take a look at. Ephesus, 431. Christ is the incarnate Word of God. You got any problem with that? Does that sound okay? Yeah, that sounds all right. But the flip side of that You see, Mary as Theotokos. Theotokos. Basically, the birthing one of God. The birthing one of God. So the term that we see in English is the mother of God. What's the deal with that? Is that a problem? Not a problem. What do you think? I see heads shaking. What's that? Yeah, it's a significant problem. Now, here's the point.

The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have not separated at this point. So guess what both of them believe? They both hold to this teaching because it was something they had in common. The Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church had not parted ways. So they both hold to this teaching of this Theotokos, Mary as the mother of God.

One, Chalcedon 451 is a council that divided off the churches in what are called the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the main ones you may have heard of is the Coptic Orthodox Church, that's the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and among those they separated from the rest of the Orthodox Churches at that point. They had a squabble over, it says, Christ is perfect God and perfect man, and one person is what they concluded. And the churches in the Oriental Orthodox Church said that Christ is perfect God and perfect man, but they say, no, he has two persons that are not intermixed.

So we're not agreeing to that, and so we're leaving. So then you have the first break off of some Orthodox churches. These are the Oriental Orthodox churches from Egypt and farther east, broke off at that point. Then, after that, you started having a division, and I have these in a blue highlight on your printout. You started having a division between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches, the other churches that were part of this confederation of bishops, noting that Alexandria, the Coptic Orthodox Church, had already broken off. So now you start to see things split up even more. And now by this time, where you see the blue highlights there, there's starting to be some division amongst the churches. Okay, top of page three.

So they had these councils initiated first by Emperor Constantine. They began with a united Roman Empire, but ended with the empire having passed out of existence. So what took place in that is that the Roman Empire having established the first council, when these councils met, they increasingly were to replace the government that had fallen apart and to have power over the governments that took the place of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire by the 400s, what we call the 5th century, had substantially lost the ability to defend itself. Three times in the 5th century having various foreign armies come in and invade Rome. So now, imagine, here's Rome, can't even defend itself.

The foreign armies come in unopposed, except for the bishop going out and talking to them and said, I'm kind of paraphrasing, don't be too mean to us. And so people saw that the bishop went out and talked to them and they weren't too nasty, they just came and took some things, and they thought the bishop was a hero, the bishop of Rome.

All right, now, 553, The Latin and Eastern churches were not able to resolve their differences over what was known as the Filioque Controversy. What that is all about is in the Eastern Church, they said that the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the Son did not send the Holy Spirit too. In the Latin Church, they said the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the Son also sent the Holy Spirit.

That was the controversy. That was the point of controversy. You can look that up for yourself. John 14, 26, 15, 26, and 16, 7 says that Jesus also, the Son, also sent the Spirit. So Eastern churches didn't seem to look at Scripture when they made a determination here. But nonetheless, that was a controversy that began splitting the churches. Finally, 1054, the Bishop of Rome and the Bishop of Constantinople each excommunicated the others. Completely split things up and that severed the relationship there. The confederation of bishops was done.

Completely done for. There was, up until that point, a lot of commonality and communication between the two. At that point, things severed entirely. Jack, can you start to put your hand up? Oh, basically, all the scriptures were completed by 96 AD. That's when the Book of Revelation was complete. And it was, oh yeah, 96 AD. It's done.

And they had already begun, you know, copying. Paul said, you know, this letter to the church at Colossae, this letter, read it to the church at Laodicea, the ones from Laodicea, read it to the church at Colossae. There was already, you know, copying. Paul at one point writing to Timothy quotes Luke's gospel. So there was already, you know, this kind of reference. Peter talked about Paul having written scriptures.

So there was a common understanding of things, you know, being quoted, of things being copied, of things being read publicly in the churches before the New Testament was even done. So that by the time, 9-6 AD, John had written the last New Testament book, the book of Revelation, it was already well understood. And John started off his book of Revelation, blessed are those who hear and read. So there's both a public reading and public hearing of the scripture and reading out loud, as well as passing it along in written form.

Okay, so you have here the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches both having a lot of common characteristics, but you start seeing this division taking place. But the division had not taken place until after a lot of things in common had already been set in motion.

The Latin churches had one singular major bishop in Rome. That was it. That was the Western And if you look back before at the line that we had, see, all the Western churches had Romans. The Eastern churches now had multiple bishops. So this is a part of the pattern. In the Western church, you begin to see that the Roman Catholic Church is preeminent, is above all. and one singular hierarchy under the Roman Catholic Church.

You already have in place 413, it's infant baptism or capital punishment. The whole, you know, Western Church is taking that in place. So the bottom line, the choice for those who are about to be parents, time to think about this, nine months, right, to think about this. Do you want to be a parent and have your child baptized as an infant and be alive? Or do you want to be killed and have them baptize the infant anyway? So, your choice. Tough choice, huh? Yeah, difficult. But that was the one that was already established.

In the East, where they remained having a plurality of bishops, then they continued to establish separate Orthodox churches. Now, why would there be separate Orthodox churches? Why would that end up happening? Yeah, Todd? Yeah, first of all, you've got different bishops and they're disagreeing. You don't have the singular situation in the West where, look, we've got one guy at the top and you've got anything to decide, he can call the shots and there you're done. In the East, there's a plurality of bishops. That by itself is going to create the opportunity for dissension. All right, what else do you have?

What was 9-11 all about? What religion? Islam, okay? So, 632 was the year of Muhammad's death. From there, warriors spread into Europe, into Asia, and into North Africa. The sign of the scimitar, okay? Spread in all three directions, war just spread into all three continents, adjacent continents, from Arabia. That was how Islam got its start with the sword.

As it did so, is the East or the West going to get the worst of the onslaught? Who's going to get it first? The East is going to get the onslaught first, and they're going to be closest to the center of it. And so that's the other thing, a plurality of bishops, Todd's correct, You get this onslaught that makes it hard for you to communicate, that makes it hard for you to keep church bodies together, the onslaught that makes it difficult for you to get together and talk to one another. So you have a military political situation that further underscores the division.

So they end up having a great many different Orthodox churches. You've got the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church. You've got the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church. You've got the Antiochian Orthodox Church. And you just keep going on and on and on and on with these little political groups because of this kind of shifting background. OK, we push the Muslims out. But by the time you did that, that divided these churches. And you get the Muslims out of this other group. But by the time you do that, you divide up some other churches. So political and military activity continued to separate them and divide them up. Okay, now, top of page four.

The ability to add new traditions thereby supplementing or overriding the authority of scripture in both the Latin Church and the Eastern Churches was and is mitigated by the maintenance of existing traditions. So you've got the one thing that keeps things from changing is you have traditions. but you also have the ability to add new truth. And why do you have the ability to add new truth? With both the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches. Tom?

Okay, so one of the pressures is how do I convert the pagan populations? A part of it is adapting to the pagan populations. That creates problems. But how do they do that? How do they get a basis of authority that allows them to add to, sometimes, supplanting scripture?

Yes, the difference of interpretation. That would be one. Who gets to decide the interpretation? The bishop does, right? So you get leadership The leadership gets to decide. You don't get to decide. We'll take a look at an example of that this next week that's just going to make you shake your head. But anyway, you're correct. Difference of interpretation.

What else? in the initial attempt to convert, they will go to the head tribal leader, or the head leftover Roman leader, and say, okay, I'm a leftover Roman leader, I'm in charge of this area, but I'm not connected to Roman Constantine or anybody. And that gets the leverage to say, okay, because I became a Christian Okay, so you get conversion by political action.

And that was really common in the whole ancient world. So it was really carrying over a practice that in our mindset is a little hard to fathom. But in the ancient world, that was the standard, is whatever the political leader, whatever his religion is, that's what ours is. Yeah, Marilyn? Yes. People don't want to think about it. They want something else to tell them. They don't want to think about it for themselves. They want somebody else to tell them. Good point.

Even in modern missions, a lot of times tribal groups become Christians as the leader. Yes. Gail's bringing up the point in modern missions, this is frequently the case. What does the leader do? That's what we do. Because again, this is a very common custom among everything from tribes to major empires in those days, whatever the leader did, that's what everybody's supposed to do. Yeah, it's a long standing pattern.

Our idea, you know, where there is sort of a difference between the political and the religious orientation is relatively new. Yeah, Todd. Sure, they would import beliefs from the pagan religions. Now, the one thing that you can do is the church tradition, in the way both the Orthodox and Catholic Church operate, church tradition is a way in which you can allow the addition of practices and doctrines to Scripture. On the other hand, was not the church tradition at some point new? At some point it was brand new because we have things that are not in Scripture that we're carrying out. So what would happen is you have this loophole called tradition when in fact at some point the tradition is new.

We made the point, for instance, that the idea of exalting Mary was from about the third century. The idea that you have baptism and the Lord's Table having spiritual effectiveness was about the third century. So it's outside of Scripture. Fitting Jack's question, it's over a century after Scripture is completed.

Now you've got this new idea introduced and accepted within the churches. So there was already a sense of, we can do something and add some teaching that Scripture itself does not support. and it went one step beyond that. Remember a couple of pages back, bottom of page 2, Ephesus, 431, Christ is the incarnate word and Mary is Theotokos. Both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches hold to this teaching. Now, during Paul's time, what had been at Ephesus? What was the big edifice at Ephesus? The Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was the pride of Ephesus. And Artemis was a male or female god? Female goddess.

Here was the center, so now where is the church meeting? Ephesus. And what do they do in order to make it very adaptable to the pagan practice that had been longstanding? What do you do? Oh, it's not Artemis anymore, it's Mary. And now we give Mary a special position and it fits very well because we're meeting at Ephesus and the folks at Ephesus will really like this. Yeah, you basically get to carry over the worship that you've had of Artemis and transfer that to Mary and give now Mary an exalted position.

So this is why you will see in certainly the Catholic documents and I would suspect the Orthodox documents as well, although I don't know that, Well, they will say that Mary is a mediator. What does scripture say? There is one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ. It will say that Mary is our helper. Now, who's our helper? The Holy Spirit.

So, you begin to have some really serious contradictions. Why? Because you have the ability to add to what is authoritative in Scripture, plus the ability to determine what does Scripture mean. The Roman Catholic catechism says explicitly, you know where it says in Ephesians 1, 3, or blessed with every spiritual blessing? That's applied to Mary. She's the one who gets the blessings. She is the one who is chosen for the foundation of the world. It's applied to her. And you don't get to decide that that's not what it means.

Yeah, Art? Good point. What's interesting is although the Roman Catholic Church certainly can be pointed out as responsible for continuing to copy the scriptures, they also kept it from people, and that's Art's point. They kept it from people in two ways. One is that they adopted the Latin translation, the Vulgate, as the inspired translation. And of course, any loss of understanding from the Vulgate gets lost. And that's fine.

Did everybody speak Latin when that rule was made? Yes, they did. However, as time went on, and you went into other areas, what happened to Latin? Latin becomes now a dying language, because the Roman Empire is dying, right? And so now you've got, here's the inspired thing that's in Latin, and it can't be in anything else. And you don't distribute it, except in this Latin. And now, sure, you've got the scriptures, and people can hear it, but they don't understand the word it says. And then all the mass and everything else is in Latin.

You hear the term hocus pocus? That's a distortion of hic es corpus, which means that's the changing of the wafer. This is the body. So that's how hocus pocus came from. It's this magic stuff that you do. The sense of what scripture meant had been lost. People didn't understand Latin, everything was frozen into Latin, whereas for the mass of the population, nobody had any idea what was being said or read. That was one reason.

The other thing is it was forbidden for the private person to have copies of the scriptures, in some cases on penalty of death. So to have a private copy was not allowed. Furthermore, they're of course very expensive, but just to even have a copy was just not permitted. So the copies that they did have and they did copy were retained in ownership by the church. So between language and prohibition of ownership, you just can't get it. It was rare and difficult for people to get copies of the scriptures.

Okay, now you see on page four this nice little circle with some colors and dots and things of that sort. These are what are called the autocephalous orthodox churches. What do we mean by that? Sounds like a disease. Yeah, bud? Yeah, yeah, it's water on the brain kind of thing.

What this means is these are the churches that are headed up independently, but honoring the bishop at Constantinople. And where was Constantinople? That was the capital of the Eastern Empire, right? or the eastern capital of the Empire. So the Bishop of Constantinople is given the highest honor.

And then the rest of the churches, and then what you find is, and this gets a little complicated, but so here's this set of autocephalous churches. This excludes the ones that broke off back at 451. and like the Coptic and other Oriental Orthodox churches. They're not on here. So these are the ones that you see that have a remaining association with one another, but with a bishop who rules over local church priests, and then a head of each one, and the highest honors going to the one in Constantinople. So here's the codes here. You've got the one church that is the first among equals, is the way they put it. I don't know how you figure that one out, but the first among equals, this is Constantinople, gets the highest honors.

That church, notice what's the number in the middle? It's 27, and they have 27 bishops under that one kind of head bishop. And they'll have terms for these guys like His Holiness and terms like that. And they'll even have it abbreviated HH. Then you'll have other instances like here's the church at Antioch with 26 bishops.

As a matter of fact, year and a half, almost two years, I've had continuing email conversation and once even over the phone with a fellow who I was helping him break out of the Antiochian Orthodox Monastery in Arizona. He was in, he says, I need help getting out. So anyway, interesting, he is out now and in Memphis, last time I contacted him. So anyway, they've got that there.

Notice that at the Constantinople circle, you've got a number of others that are shown there like in green and red. And what that means is you may have churches in other areas. If there's a zero, it means that there's no local bishop over them. So it gets complicated here, but that's their sense. You've got 14 equal Orthodox churches, under the Ottocephalus arrangement with Constantinople given the highest honors. You have additional churches, over a half dozen of them, that are Oriental Orthodox churches that extend off into Asia and places of that sort. Then notice you've got got them in different places.

Some of these were under local governments. For example, you notice on the lower left there's Russia. Lots of bishops under Russia. Russia has the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church for From about roughly the 1500s into the time when the Communist Revolution took place, the Bolshevik Revolution took place, the Russian Orthodox Church was a part of the Russian government.

So they kind of took it under its wing. A lot of that became much more in question. Notice how many of these were a part of the Eastern Bloc countries and behind the Iron Curtain. So a number of them went through a period of duress during that time where they had to be acknowledged and officially accepted by the government. So they went through a tough time.

Okay, next week we're going to take a look and examine the Roman Catholic Church a little more closely. What we'll do is we'll look at some contrasts and comparisons between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. Some things that have remained the same. We've mentioned a couple of them.

They both acknowledge Mary as the Theotokos, the mother of God. They both give Mary a special honors. They both say that Mary is eternal virgin. So they both maintain that kind of teaching. Both of them have bishops, although the authority structure is different, as you see between the two. Yeah, Todd? You're talking about Matthias? Okay, now here's what I think you're saying. Matthias was the one who specifically replaced Judas. James, who was Jesus' brother, half-brother, if you will, James was one who, the evidence seems to indicate that he was not a believer until after the resurrection, and that seeing Christ resurrected, of course, kind of changed his mind. That would, wouldn't it?

Yeah, here's the interesting thing, is the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, since they both hold to Jesus being you know, born of a virgin Mary, and Mary remained a virgin, according to the teaching of both churches, they each hold to different positions as to why Jesus was, you know, the lone one born of Mary.

And so some will say, well, it's because it really means cousin, and that's usually the Roman Catholic teaching. The Orthodox teaching is, no, it's not that these are Jesus' cousins. They will say it's because Joseph had another wife. And so they'll go through that teaching. So anyway, they both would say that Mary is eternal virgin, but their explanation as to how Jesus has brothers and sisters differs. And it differs just by how did it come about.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Right. That's correct. That's correct. Right. What was interesting was that still it got out, still there were people that spread the gospel. They were often severely persecuted and killed. When we went through church history, as a matter of fact, I think we showed a list, there were a number of different groups that got started, aside from the Roman Catholic Church, and were obviously under suppression. Many of them severely persecuted, but nonetheless, the word got out. If people wanted the truth, they got it. They were able to find it. And so, you know, was it hard to get a hold of a Bible? Yeah. Could you find it if you wanted it? Yep.

And the truth was available, and there were people that were saved. They were severely persecuted, but there were people that were saved during that time. and people that that got the gospel you know there was no uh... uh... uh... free and easy access there's no question about it but they were still people who had access to the scriptures there were people through the centuries and in their fact uh... during the reformation one of the catholic uh... leaders said uh... the the truth is that we've got these reformers says the people that the catholic church has killed from fourth 413 when they made it capital punishment for people not to baptize their infants until the Reformation. He says more people have been killed by the Roman Catholic Church during that time than all the numbers of the Reformers. So there were a great many people who did come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. There were people who did get the truth.

It was not easy. The Lord, in the midst of it, did make His Word available, in spite of the suppression, and there were people that were saved, and He did preserve His Word through it. Does that hopefully help answer the question? Difficult? Yes. Impossible?

No. Really, in our own time, the experience of Christians living behind the Iron Curtain, and even in some places now, You know, like Saudi Arabia, Americans can travel there, but you can't take a Bible in. They've got shredders ready for your Bible. So there are places now where scripture is suppressed. Nonetheless, I know Christians that have gone behind there and snuck their scripture in.

Yes? Well, yeah, there's various ways. It's amazing. I mean, because you can still get in there and download it. One instance, this was before the era of the internet, where they had the entire Bible on one slide. It looks like a bunch of dots, but the entire Bible on one slide, and you take a look at that, you know, it's a good magnification. You can see it's all there. So it's amazing how it's come about. Yes. Yeah. China has that. They've got some limitations on your access to the internet. But there are also ways around that, too. Yeah, there are always ways around it, and people find ways. There are ways of getting the Bibles in.

I have one friend from Reno. He and another friend, when there was the Iron Curtain, he was at the guard post, and he had a bunch of Bible, you know, references and small Bibles and Bible literature stuffed into coat pockets and they stopped him at the guard post there before he was going behind the iron curtain and they made him lay it all out and so they had laid it out all on the table and the guy was sitting there scolding him and while the guy scolded him they took all the literature and put it back in the pockets and he never saw it. It was sitting there right in front of him And the guy was sitting there scolding them, and they just sat there listening and put stuff all back in their pockets and walked out with it. Yeah, Bill Osgood's the guy's name, Bill Osgood Jr. So anyway, the Lord sometimes can do things to preserve and allow the admission of Scripture.

People find ways to get it in, and it is astounding how the Lord gets the message to people and God's Word is preserved. My brother told me another account, and this was again an instance where the communist suppression was taking place. The fellow was in prison, and he said, oh, I've got to get a hold of God's word.

And his way of getting a hold of God's word is they assign him to latrine cleanup duty. But the officers were using a Bible for toilet paper. That's how he got his pages of the Bible. I won't go into detail, it's a little gross. The Lord provided. The Lord answered prayer.

Okay, next week we'll take a look at the Roman Catholic Church looking more at side by side with an emphasis on the Roman Catholic Church and making more of a comparison directly with Scripture. Okay, so the idea is we're kind of doing this in two parts. Next week we'll look at the Roman Catholic Church, looking at Scripture, taking some quotes out of the Roman Catholic Catechism as we do so. and also showing the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic teachings side by side.